he said, she said

I noticed a site member advocate the adage that "said" is the workhorse of dialogue tags. Furthermore, they claimed it should only be set aside on rare occasions. The thing is, I don't experience that to be true. Not only will I quickly tire from reading "he said/she said" when they're applied liberally, but I feel they are all too often a missed opportunity to breath life into the character's speech.

If I have the opportunity to communicate tone or emotion with my dialogue tag, then I feel I should take it. For example: he barked, she snarled, he offfered, she protested, etc. All of those modifiers add something important imo. So, what am I missing?

 

Those dialogue tags are amateurish, in my view. I can see a rare use, but if I see them a lot it really puts me off.

 

I agree with @Steerpike. When every dialogue tag is different it reads as very juvenile and unprofessional. Stick with "said" for the most part, but also be aware that not every utterance needs a tag. There should be a balance between dialogue followed by a tag, dialogue preceded by an action, and dialogue in isolation.

 

What's your reasoning for believing that?

 

"he/she said" seems to be almost invisible to most readers, from what I've read. It is to me for sure.
I try to let the dialog work by itself as much as I can. If it's well written, the reader will know if it's barked, begged, protested. I'll throw something in if the tone of the dialog could be ambiguous.
I guess everyone has their own style.

 

I personally don't see any issue with using "said" for 90% of a story. Most books do it. It's just worth it to use other "tags" when appropriate (such as "called", "exclaimed", "mumbled", etc.), where it clarifies the specific mood or voice of a given piece of dialogue. But also, anything can be overused. It just depends on how it's done.

 

Just listen to how it sounds. This is an extreme example, but you think this is better than 'He said/She said' ?

Tom opened the door and noticed the woman immediately. "Who are you!?" he exclaimed.
"You don't need to know," she countered.
Tom was almost lost for words. "But this is my house," he protested. "So I'll ask again; who are you?"
The woman smiled. "You really don't recognise me, do you?" she teased.
"No," Tom admitted. "I don't"

And so on and so forth.

 

Yep. “Said” is largely invisible. If you need a different tag, it’s likely worth looking at the dialogue to see if it is any good. If you consistently need tags other than said to characterize dialogue, I think it is a problem. Much of the time, you can leave out tags altogether and let the dialogue do the work.

The exception that comes to mind is when you’re creating a contrast between the dialogue itself and how it is said—for example when the dialogue might normally be read as a yell but it is being whispered. Or when it might be a mean comment, but you want to let the reader know it is being said kindly. Even then there are probably better ways, but varied tags don’t bother me when they serve that kind of purpose. When they’re unnecessary or, worse, a crutch to prop up bad dialogue, it’s a problem.

 

@OurJud That's a strawman. I never suggested that every line of dialogue requires a tag. But to play along: I do like "No," Tom admitted. "I don't."

 

Well for me it's because it reads like the author is insecure in how they've set up the scene the dialogue takes place in, so they feel they have to shoot the modifier full of steroids (to quote Stephen King) to get their point across that the character is angry, sad, frightened, etc. . Like @graveleye said above:

It can also come off for me as melodramatic, as if the people having the dialogue are actors unnecessarily chewing up the scenery as opposed to having a conversation you might hear in real life.

 

I don't need any reasoning for it. I'm just telling you my opinion of writing that is constructed that way. It feels exaggerated, and as though the author doesn't trust that I'm mature enough to work out for myself how the speaker is communicating.

 

The argument for using only "he said/she said" is this: If your line of dialogue was strong enough, there would be no need for the tag. You should be able to feel/see the intent and emotion behind the words without having to be spoon-fed how exactly the character said it.

I'd say the exception would be if it were impossible for the words to convey that. For example, I like the tag "whispered", and I also like the adverb "softly/gently" - when something is said softly. However, a word like "barked" should be evident from the line of speech itself as well as context.

However, a lot of folks around here hate any tag other than "said/asked" but I'm not amongst them. I'm actually in favour of using beats and no tag at all instead He rubbed his face. She looked away. Heat rose to her cheeks. These things, for me, show a lot better character emotions than any dialogue tag, and will in turn convey exactly how a line is said.

Also, where are you from? Nothing to do with your English. But for example, in Czech, they use a MILLION dialogue tags. I'm not fluent so it's not like I've read tonnes of books, but the few children's books I've tried, they seriously use a different dialogue tag in every single line. I asked my Czech husband about it and he told me it's considered good writing. That's Czech literature's norm. So if I were to write well in Czech, I'd need to use tags, and the lack of them might feel odd and bland to a native Czech reader.

One time, I tried to write a little story in Chinese - nothing long, just 200 words or so (my Chinese isn't good enough for much more). I showed it to my mum (we're Chinese, if you hadn't guessed by now), and she frowned and said, "Every sentence makes sense, but the story as a whole doesn't make sense. You've started with the buzz of the bee and then zoomed in to the character being bothered by the bee. But what you should do is describe the room and the setting first, explain there's a character reading a book, and then bring in the bee."

It's a different sequence of description. You must begin with context, with the larger picture, before you go to the detail. In English narrative, what I did would have been fine (I only write in English, honestly). In Chinese, it turns out, it's not fine. It's poor literature.

This is why I'm asking where are you from? Your cultural background could very well affect what kind of literature you prefer, even if you're reading in English and English writing conventions might be different.

 

Keep in mind I'm talking about substituting "barked" for "said" in cases where I feel it's more appropriate.

"Get it done tonight," he barked.

"Get it done tonight," he said.

There's a significant difference between the two, no?

 

I definitely agree with that.

 

To me, that's the perfect example of when it's okay to use a substitute for "said", when the tone may not be super obvious.

 

Not sure what a strawman is, but I did say it was an extreme example. The purpose was to better convey why the far more stealthy 'said' shouldn't be substituted too often.

Try reading McCarthy's The Road. He doesn't use any dialogue tags.

 

Just working with @OurJud's example, I'd say you could hit a happy medium. I'm with @Bone2pick in that I get irritated with 'said said said' as the go-to dialogue tag. It's not invisible when it's used all the time. I much prefer the 'action beat' that denotes a speaker by letting us know what they are doing or thinking. As long as it's clear who the speaker is, a speech tag isn't necessary. However, the other words in place of 'said' can add something to the scene that the spoken words alone don't quite convey. To use OurJud's example:

Tom opened the door and noticed the woman immediately. "Who are you!?"
"You don't need to know."
Tom was almost lost for words. "But ...this is my house," he managed, eventually. "So I'll ask again; who are you?"
The woman smiled. "You really don't recognise me, do you?"
"No," Tom admitted. "I don't."

Instead of:

Tom opened the door and noticed the woman immediately. "Who are you!?"
"You don't need to know."
Tom was almost lost for words. "But this is my house," he said. "So I'll ask again; who are you?"
The woman smiled. "You really don't recognise me, do you?"
"No," Tom said. "I don't."

There is nothing wrong with either example, but the first example conveys Tom's bewilderment better than the second one does. The second one feels angrier. The different writing styles are both useful, when employed with purpose.

What doesn't really work all that well is replacing all the tags with 'said,' as I've done below. It's overkill that does nothing for the story except denote the identity of the speaker.

Tom opened the door and noticed the woman immediately. "Who are you!?" he said.
"You don't need to know," she said.
Tom was almost lost for words. "But this is my house," he said. "So I'll ask again; who are you?"
The woman smiled. "You really don't recognise me, do you?" she said.
"No," Tom said. "I don't."

And if the passage contained a line of dialogue like "Help! Fire! Run!" Tom said—well that would be bordering on the ridiculous. Just be mindful of the effect you want to create, and choose accordingly.

 

I agree with what you read--use "said" the vast majority of the time. However, that assumes that you very often use no dialogue tag at all.

As I see it:

1) The words of the dialogue, and perhaps any associated action, should be doing the communication, not the tag. If you need a tag to tell the reader how the thing was said or how it appears to be intended, the words aren't doing their job. There are rare exceptions, which is why the rule is that "most" tags should be 'said'.

2) If the words ARE doing their job, the tag feels like unnecessary explanation, like the writer thinks the reader is just a little bit stupid and needs every lesson bolded and underlined.

3) The frequent use of tags other than 'said' draw the reader's attention to the mechanics of dialogue, and that breaks their absorption in the story. If you want to describe tone, it may be better to weave that in another way.

Now, that doesn't mean that your dialogue has to be packed full of "said"--very often, you can avoid using any tag at all. But if you need a tag, I think that the vast majority should be 'said', with an occasional 'asked', and others appearing very rarely.

Using your first example as an example:

"No," Tom admitted. "I don't."

Unless the fact that this is an admission is a surprise to the reader, "admitted" is redundant. As a 'surprise', say:

"No," Tom admitted. "I've never robbed a bank."

I find myself seeing this as a line in a conversation with a small child who has formed the idea that Tom is a glamorous criminal. Tom is reluctant to dash his illusions by telling him that, no, he's actually a web developer. But Tom is an honest guy, so he tells the child the truth. Here, we have a conflict of expectations that we need to clarify somehow, and the tag may do a good job of clarifying them.

I don't actually know that there is. The peremptory nature of the words themselves already seem to communicate most of what you get from 'barked'. Again, if it's a surprise--for example, if the speaker has been mild and courteous up to now, and if the words themselves don't communicate the peremptory message--it might earn its keep.

But you still run into (3). If you have that "barked" and soon after that a "snarled" and a little later even a "replied", the reader is going to become hyper-aware of the structure of the dialogue.

I have a character that tends to manipulate others with his tone. Rather than using a non-said tag, I will sometimes describe the tone. This, too, will get old after a while, and I've sort of been waiting for someone to complain, but it hasn't happened yet. This is not that character, but an example of tone-description:

Joe nodded. All deferential courtesy, he said, "Of course. Anything you want, anything at all. How is the wine?"

"It's...fine." Jane peered into the glass. "Just fine."

Joe peered with her, then extended a hand to take the glass. "May I?"

Jane nodded, suddenly wary. She knew what was coming.

Joe examined the glass, twirling it between his fingers to see all sides. "Mm." A tone of discovery. He turned slightly to choose his victim. A busboy was conveniently nearby. He raised his voice and put into it all the contempt that Jane knew he'd been suppressing since the moment she sat down. "Dirty glass!"
​

Edited to remove what I added: Got the extra use of 'voice' out of there.
Edited again to add: Also note only one tag of any kind in four, arguably five (since he spoke at either end of a paragraph) pieces of dialogue. This, IMO, is the solution to too many instances of "said"--kill the tags.

 

That sounds very similar to my approach, and I'd wager that a fair amount of that 10% is in my sex scenes. I definitely use modifiers like groaned, moaned, cried, etc. in those scenes, which I think is typical for the romance genre. I think I tend to use modifiers other than said (or no modifier at all) for dialogue in scenes of high emotion, which is probably why overuse of them makes the writing feel super melodramatic to me.

 

I disagree. First, one can deny something and it not be an admission; so it is, in fact, a surprise to the reader. Admissions, similar to confessions, have a characteristic tone. There's vulnerability associated with them; and vulnerable speech has a quality ordinary speech doesn't.

"No," Tom said. "I don't."

"No," Tom admitted. "I don't."

The two are not interchangeable imo.

 

You can't judge a single line out of context. I'd need a paragraph, maybe more, to know if it's a surprise or not. "admitted" may or may not add necessary information. If it does, you use it, and you have used up one of your limited quota of non-'said' tags--unless you find another way to communicate the same information. One random example:

Tom looked at her for a moment, then shrugged and looked away. "No. I don't."

 

Popping in to add that "asked" is also nearly invisible. It needs some excuse for replacing 'said', but not nearly as much as most of the others.

 

You used more words but said less. "Admitted" suggests vulnerability, whereas shrugging and looking away doesn't. Honestly, you communicated indifference more than anything.

But that's really not the issue, because I've already agreed that using action beats are generally superior over descriptive dialogue tags. But in the instances when an action beat would gunk up the pacing, I often prefer to use evocative tags.

 

It sounds like you have already made up your mind that using alternatives to “said” and action beats is preferable. So what information are you actually looking for?